Sunday, July 22, 2012

Block Sites from Using Your Facebook Login with Adblock Plus

Facebook's new Instant Personalization Program allows
other sites to access your Facebook data and connect you with people on
those sites. Not only can you turn this feature off, but you can keep
sites from retrieving your Facebook information with Adblock filters.
Not
only does Facebook have an agreement with sites like Yelp and Pandora,
but we've already seen that Facebook bugs can cause other, non-compliant
sites to add applications to your profile, as long as you're logged into Facebook while you browse. Reader Saudrapsmann shows us how to keep this from happening in the future:

These four separate filters for AdBlock+ made it so not even the
Facebook Privacy Scanner could see that I was logged into Facebook:
||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||fbcdn.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

Just go into Adblock Plus' preferences, click add filter, and copy
and paste each of the above as a separate filter. Now, even if you're
logged into Facebook, outside sites will not be able to tell, so your
accounts won't automatically link with one another.
You should also turn off Facebook's Instant Personalization Program
in your Facebook privacy settings. Note that doing this without adding
the filters doesn't block you from future bugs in the system, and if
your Facebook has already connected to a site, you'll have to go into
your Facebook settings and delete the added application. You'll also
have to go to your Yelp, Pandora, or Microsoft Docs.com account and
delete the friends that Facebook added for you.